With the increasing popularity of portable computing devices and wireless connectivity, there has been a proliferation of wireless communication standards and protocols. For example, a Personal Digital Assistant (PDA) may communicate with several other portable or non portable devices wirelessly and run wireless applications. Such a PDA may at different times (and in some cases, concurrently) implement WLAN, BLUETOOTH™ (a short-range wireless radio technology), GPS, Cellular, Cordless or other RF applications. Currently, each such application requires its own software and hardware and as a result each application that is enabled contributes individually to the cost of the portable device. In addition, each application is generally configured in the device before the device is sold, or in some cases purchased as a hardware add on.
It would be very useful if a device could be developed that could be configured and reconfigured to implement different wireless applications and protocols as desired. Furthermore, if such a device could use common hardware or reconfigurable software resources to implement different protocols or applications, then the cost of potentially including a large selection of applications in a device could be reduced. What is needed, therefore, is a configurable wireless interface that could be included in a device to allow that device to be configured to run multiple wireless applications.